June 17, 2024
Amanda Kingsley on Compassionate Conversations About Reproductive Decisions
What if the toughest decision of your life could lead to profound personal growth? In our latest episode, we engage in a heartfelt conversation with Amanda Kingsley, a life and after-abortion coach, who opens up about her deeply personal and multifaceted reproductive health journey. Amanda shares her story of navigating planned and unplanned pregnancies, challenging pregnancies and childbirths, and the emotional labyrinth of abortion, offering listeners a rare and compassionate insight into the complexities of reproductive choices.
Join us as Amanda offers a raw and honest look into her experiences, from a planned home birth that turned into a hospital induction to enduring 17 weeks of bed rest during a challenging pregnancy. Her tales of unexpected twists and the need to let go of control are not just about her personal journey but are reflective of the broader human experience in dealing with life's unpredictability. By examining these pivotal moments, Amanda’s narrative underscores the profound lessons learned and the personal growth that comes with facing such challenges.
Throughout the episode, we touch on the societal pressures and the nuanced feelings that surround abortion decision-making. Amanda bravely addresses the often unspoken realities, such as the illusion of choice in difficult circumstances. This conversation emphasizes the need for compassionate and open discussions about abortion, recognizing the emotional and ethical complexities involved. Amanda’s courage in sharing her story highlights the importance of brave, albeit imperfect, conversations in fostering deeper understanding and empathy.
Connect with Amanda:
https://www.instagram.com/amandastarkingsley
https://amandastarkingsley.myflodesk.com/amandastarkingsley
Join the Bump & Beyond Online Community for moms & moms-to-be!
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Medical Disclaimer:
This podcast is intended as a safe space for women to share their birth experiences. It is not intended to provide medical advice. Each woman’s medical course of action is individual and may not appropriately transfer to another similar situation. Please speak to your medical provider before making any medical decisions. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that evidence based practice evolves as our knowledge of science improves. To the best of my ability I will attempt to present the most current ACOG and AWHONN recommendations at the time the podcast is recorded, but that may not necessarily reflect the best practices at the time the podcast is heard. Additionally, guests sharing their stories have the right to autonomy in their medical decisions, and may share their choice to go against current practice recommendations. I intend to hold space for people to share their decisions. I will attempt to share the current recommendations so that my audience is informed, but it is up to each individual to choose what is best for them.
Chapters
00:00 - Exploring Abortion and Birth Stories
08:01 - Reproductive Health Journey Lessons
25:18 - Complexities of Abortion Decision Making
36:32 - Complexities of Abortion Decision Making
50:41 - Complexity of Abortion Decision-Making
57:56 - Importance of Brave Conversations
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hello, today I have with me Amanda Kingsley.
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Amanda is the mother of three, a life and after abortion coach, and she is here today to share her birth journey with us.
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Amanda, welcome and thank you for joining me.
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Thank you for having me.
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I am in deep gratitude for anyone open to having these conversations in their platforms.
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It's a big deal.
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Thank you.
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I have been looking for the perfect opportunity to add this topic to my platform and I saw you on Instagram and I was like abortion coach.
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Brilliant.
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Or scary or scary.
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There are a lot of ways that you can feel about that.
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I did dig deeper and I love how we in our pre chat you're talking about the distinction, life and after abortion, coach and making peace with your decisions and living the life that you deserve, that you chose.
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So, yeah, I think that's super important and I think that is something that kind of translates to all parts of life.
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But especially when making such a terrifying, difficult, life-altering decision that you're going to have to sit with, it doesn't matter how you came to that choice.
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Things come up for you after and, just like with birth, things come up that you don't expect because you're just really it's life-altering and anytime you make a life-altering decision, lots of things come up for you.
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Yeah, I will say I'll just start here by saying there's a big spectrum of how this can land.
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For some people it's not life altering at all.
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It literally is just healthcare.
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They make a decision, they move on.
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There are people who make a decision, it's a procedure, they move on, and then they go to have kids or they have a miscarriage later, or they have struggle with infertility or they get a hysterectomy, or their kids move away for college.
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There's many, many points that it can come back and be like, oh okay, well, there's stuff here.
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So I do agree with you that it's life altering.
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I don't think all people recognize that.
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Yes, and I'm positive there are people who never look back.
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But it also can be like a thing where we don't realize that it's really impacted us until some other activation happens and we're like, oh, look at that.
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Yeah Well, and additionally, I think the more I learn how trauma works in the body, the physical aspect of the procedure, part of the abortion, can come back.
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I mean, I feel like I feel like those are maybe the unicorns where there's just absolutely no effect.
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I think what happens is you can't avoid the procedure.
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So if there's no emotional effect because you are so very confident in your decision and that you know that this is not part of your life, you're still going to have to go through the procedure.
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And the people that I know that have gone through that procedure are not always anticipating everything that goes into the procedure.
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And so I mean there's just there's so many points, there's so many touch points where this could be a difficult emotional, physical challenge for people and I don't know that that's recognized.
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I mean, I think the unicorns, right Like the people who never look back like it just wasn't.
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I do have spiritual beliefs that I can't like not insert, which is just that we're here for some kind of life journey, right, sorry, can I swear?
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Yeah, stuff happens.
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Stuff happens Like for us to learn from and grow from and explore, and so maybe the unicorns just weren't meant to learn anything from abortion.
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Yeah.
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They learned from other things they learned from other things.
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They learned from illnesses or car accidents, or like businesses they started Like it's just not.
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We don't know what people's stories are or why they're here, Mm-hmm.
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And as far as the procedure, I'd say like for some people there is some trauma in the procedure.
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For other people it literally is what they say, it's like a period and so.
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But I think, beyond any trauma that happens from the procedure just because something's happening to our body, there's also the trauma of, like, the system surrounding abortion, right yeah making the decision, calling the provider.
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How quick do I need to decide?
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Who am I allowed to talk?
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And not by allowed right?
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Who am I comfortable?
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Who am I allowed to talk to?
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Who's going to judge me?
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Who's not going to judge me?
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The entire experience is one that a lot of people disassociate from to some degree because there's a speed at which it happens.
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Disassociate from to some degree because there's a speed at which it happens.
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So, even if it's not the procedure that creates trauma, the entire experience has so many touch points that are just very unique and can be very intense.
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Does that make sense?
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Yeah, I totally agree.
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Yeah, Well, so with every abortion story there is so much more around it and that's why I you know I'm this podcast is the Birth Journeys podcast, but all of the reproductive history plays into the birth journey and comes up at different points just your entire birth journey and how all of this played out, because I feel like there are definitely people out there that can relate, can feel validated and benefit from your story.
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Yeah, I know I've told this on other podcasts and maybe in my own, but I am like remembering a memory.
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So I was a birth doula before I moved into this work.
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So I remember learning that people's abortion histories could have an impact on their birth and I was like whoa, that's so interesting and important.
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And then I remember and like we haven't really outwardly said like I'm very pro-abortion, like this is, we're not getting to any point where the story twists, which we you wouldn't have me on if it were just to say it out loud- yeah, we're not trying to trick you into thinking that we think that this is bad.
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We're not trying to lead you down a path and then do a bait and switch here.
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So I remember being trained as a birth doula and working with clients, learning that abortion could impact a birth experience and being like totally blown away by it.
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And then I remember being a new doula and like trying to talk to a client about their abortion, but it was almost as if like if this comes up, it's okay, I'm a safe space, you know, like very new right, like I just didn't have wisdom and experience to understand it.
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And I definitely didn have wisdom and experience to understand it and I definitely didn't have personal experience to understand it.
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So there are certainly listeners who may have already had that experience or will have that experience where just being like an experience of your womb it can come back up, it can have later effects, effects when I learned that, like I said, I didn't have, I had had children, so I had experienced birth, but I didn't have an abortion.
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So I and that is why I landed in this work, because it rocked me, like it just showed me this big, gaping hole, that like no, I felt like no one's talking about this, no one's talking about the complexity.
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So I had already had two kids by then.
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So my reproductive health journey has been no unplanned pregnancies until 38, when I had this unplanned pregnancy that led to abortion.
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So I planned a child, had a child, planned a pregnancy, had a miscarriage, then planned a pregnancy, had a child, waited six years, planned a pregnancy, had a child.
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So I think that's really important because by the time I got to age 38, I had this illusion of control around, like, yes, my body miscarried and that fell out of my control, but at the same time I knew statistically, scientifically, that there was a good chance that I would miscarry.
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So I wasn't like, I was very sad about it but I wasn't like shocked by it.
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But when you get to 38 and you've been having sex for, like you know, over 20 years and you've never had an unplanned pregnancy, like it totally shook me.
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So it was the thing that brought me to this work.
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I've had a lot of reproductive experiences.
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So I had a planned home birth that I signed a lot of medical waivers for because I was 20 days past dates when she came and that ended up being a hospital induction.
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So very interesting and transformative birth experience that included, like everything but a cesarean an epidural, antibiotics, fevers like the tub, the narcotics, like everything that was not a home birth except a cesarean.
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And then I decided to not plan a home birth because I had been through this previous experience, had a beautiful, natural, sunny side up, really intense birth experience, but also very healing.
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I knew my body could deliver, naturally Beautiful.
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Then I had this third birth and pregnancy in which I spent 17 weeks on bed rest on couch rest, planned home birth, but then I spent 17 weeks.
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Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me.
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I was a mess.
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I had two kids.
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I couldn't even make them breakfast in the morning.
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They were seven.
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He was born in 2013.
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They were I'm always so bad at math here seven and ten, so they were like taking care of themselves and obviously my husband was taking care of everything, like maybe not obviously, but I have one, so him, they were just doing it all.
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I was on the couch, 17 weeks of bed rest and then miraculously had a home birth Wow, so that's a whole journey.
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Then I had this abortion experience and I've, since just this in the last year, had a hysterectomy.
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So I'm like I've got like such a range of birth and uterine story and it all matters and like it all has made me who I am, including the abortion, probably most formatively the abortion but like I've got a, I've got a full spectrum.
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This, this body, has done a lot wow, well, I'd love you to walk through that with me because I think some of the lessons that we learn in the entire reproductive journey, like you said, it makes you who you are, and I feel like there's so much I don't always like to use the word fear, but I definitely think that's something that comes up but just mystery surrounding all of this.
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All of this, and I think the more we talk about it and the more we normalize everybody's experience and what happened emotionally and physically for them and how they moved through that part of their life is so important and different things are going to resonate with different people and I just I feel like I wish that I had had some more guidance in that.
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Even like with my birth, I was already an OB nurse with my first, but I still had trauma because I knew all the facts and so I think those stories are super important because we don't have that village where we're all in the tent, you know, delivering the babies of our aunties, our sisters, our mothers, and we don't really get to see what to expect or hear what to expect, or really it's not even something that we talk about in regular conversation at any great length.
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So if you're open to sharing just like.
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Walk us through the whole thing if you have time.
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Well, as you're talking, I was taking some notes because I was just like.
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I thought about this a lot, but I've never written it all down.
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If I had to like very quickly summarize, I think in my first birth the one that was a planned home birth what I let go of at that stage in my own journey was like control.
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I wanted to control that experience so badly.
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I wanted it to be picture perfect.
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I wanted all my family there with me and like we were going to prove how beautiful birth was and how healthy and wonderful it is to go through this together.
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And I had a total lack of control.
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I wasn't going into labor.
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I ended just like everything kept working against me is what it felt like, but basically I was not in control and that I was going to be okay anyway.
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Right, that feels like the lesson of that first.
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Oh yeah, that's the lesson of every birth.
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Oh yeah, right, that's the lesson of every birth, that you figured that out in your first is pretty remarkable.
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Well, but like, if I keep going, the miscarriage lesson was I'm human, I'm just an animal and like, statistically it doesn't always work.
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It doesn't matter how much love I have or how much I want this.
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There were five of us mommy, friends who were all pregnant at the same time and I remember looking at all of us and being like someone's not going to make it Wow.
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Yeah, that's so true.
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And sometimes I'm like did I sacrifice myself?
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But of course that's giving me way more power than I think.
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I learned I'm human, I'm just human.
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And it was different than losing control.
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It was just like a biology lesson.
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Well, the fact that you never had it to begin with, Because what control do we really have?
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Yeah, it was just like okay, well, this is just how it goes.
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And then, with my third birth, the words I wrote down was like twist and adapt, like I learned like twist and adapt, like I learned to twist and adapt, which is funny because she literally she was facing you know the right, the healthy direction when I went into labor and she literally turned.
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Like she turned sunny side up, which is for those of us who know birth.
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It's sometimes kind of the opposite right, like they twist into the right direction.
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You don't often twist into the wrong direction, Like it's kind of like a little weird, but I adapted, I stayed in the moment and I stuck with it.
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I let go of expectations, I adapted as I went and the reward was this incredibly intense physical experience and reward of being like I did it.
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So faith, like being on the couch for 17 weeks.
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I had to have faith and trust in things that I did not understand, like myself, spirit, my kiddo that I didn't know yet, like I just had to trust that it would be okay.
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Trust in my mid home birth midwives, but then also trust in my medical obstetric care, trust in the tests.
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I was like I was in the oncology ward, like I was everywhere.
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Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me.
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I had to trust medicine, but then I also had to trust spirit and I just persevered.
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I got through it.
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That feels like trust and perseverance were the lessons there.
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Then I had an abortion and that pregnancy I had an IUD in place.
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I thought it fell out without me knowing, which is mind-blowing to me.
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Yeah, you're kind of scaring me right now.
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I call it my immaculate IUD removal, because I'd had an.
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IUD between planned pregnancies and when they took it out, let me tell you I was not comfortable.
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Yeah, I was okay with the insertion, I was not okay with the removal.
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So the fact that this IUD could fall out of my body without me knowing just absolutely to this day blows my mind.
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I'm the kind of human who I remember I think it was with my son.
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So my last birth I remember watching maybe it was I'm off on dates One of the pregnancies.
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We were watching Finding Nemo, we were trying to conceive and I remember saying to whoever was in the room I think the egg just implanted, like I felt this twinge and I was like I'm pregnant, I am now going to have a baby.
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And I did.
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I had labeled myself, I had believed that I was so in tune with my body, even through everything I'd been through, like I still was holding on to that, and then that I again the immaculate iod removal happened.
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So again, just summing up all the lessons coming together I it was a lack of control.
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There was a twisting and adapting.
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There there was a trust and perseverance, there was the humanness of it all, like things don't work, but what I really learned from that loss was that I can do hard things, because it was very hard for me to choose abortion.
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It shows that, as a lifestyle decision, I was in a healthy marriage, had a roof over my head, like finances roof over my head.
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Finances did come into play.
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We were not at an excessively abundant wealthy place, but we could have figured it out.
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I was supported, I was healthy.
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There were a lot of reasons I could have kept a pregnancy, but I knew deep down it was not what was supposed to happen.
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I did not want to have a baby.
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I'm like I didn't plan for this.
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I don't want this.
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I'm done doing this.
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I'm happy with my family, and so it was the hardest thing I've done with my reproductive body Not physically, physically, my reproductive body, not physically Physically.
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It was very easy my story, but I learned that I can do hard things because it was so hard to make that choice, actively say goodbye and know that two things could be true at the same time.
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Right?
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This is so sad.
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I hate that this is happening and I'm doing the right thing.
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It's all going to be okay.
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My reasons for not wanting another pregnancy, for wanting an abortion, are valid and worthy and they matter and they're worth the hard things that I'm going to have to do to get there right.
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I'm going to have to do this hard thing of having an abortion because of this vision I have for my life that has nothing to do with another child.
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So I learned that I could do hard things.
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And then if I extended to the hysterectomy, which is so far my last reproductive journey but I'm still like in pre-perimenopause, so there's probably more to come.
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It was very emotional to say goodbye to my uterus, like I've been through a lot with me, but there was this letting go and keep going, like my uterus has defined me in so many ways on my journey.
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It's so central to all of my story and my being.
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And then I was like and now I have to let it go, and so that was just like a letting go and keep going and knowing that, that felt like it defined me all those years.
00:20:05.124 --> 00:20:06.287
But it didn't really.
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It was just the thing I sort of centered my stories around.
00:20:10.345 --> 00:20:11.006
I feel you there.
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Whenever I think about the thought of my uterus leaving my body, I mean I just I kind of feel like I want to be, just like hang on to it.
00:20:17.844 --> 00:20:18.464
No, that's mine.
00:20:18.464 --> 00:20:21.088
I've been through a lot with that friend.
00:20:21.088 --> 00:20:22.411
Yeah, it always has.
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It hasn't been always the best, but you know.
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Yeah, that's my friend.
00:20:26.884 --> 00:20:28.968
Yeah, yeah, it was very weird.
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It was very weird.
00:20:29.828 --> 00:20:38.884
Also, I think that I do have a moderate spiritual belief that everything happens for a reason, but part of that is that we make the reason Right.
00:20:38.884 --> 00:20:47.311
Like everything I just told you, someone else could have interpreted all of those births and stories completely differently, mm-hmm.
00:20:47.311 --> 00:20:51.105
I made those reasons because they feel good for me.
00:20:51.105 --> 00:20:56.765
They do feel true and right, mm-hmm, but maybe that's just because I made it up Right.
00:20:56.765 --> 00:20:59.963
They work for who I am and where I want to go.
00:20:59.963 --> 00:21:15.104
Mm-hmm, right, they work for who I am and where I want to go, and I do help people do that work around abortion is like we're never really going to know why you went through this, or multiple abortions Many people have multiple, but we can decide together what you want to make it mean.
00:21:15.806 --> 00:21:16.106
Yeah.
00:21:16.315 --> 00:21:17.842
We can figure that out together.
00:21:17.842 --> 00:21:19.602
So I think both are true.
00:21:19.602 --> 00:21:22.825
Everything happens for a reason and we make the reason.
00:21:24.695 --> 00:21:35.050
Also yeah, I have some questions that come up for me and you can either choose to answer or decline to answer, because I don't want to push your boundaries.
00:21:35.050 --> 00:21:36.537
I have no memories.
00:21:36.537 --> 00:21:42.028
Okay, cool, so abortion was never part of your plan until it came up?
00:21:42.028 --> 00:21:46.366
Did you ever think that you would choose that option?
00:21:46.914 --> 00:21:47.718
Was that something that you?
00:21:47.778 --> 00:21:48.862
ever thought was.
00:21:49.214 --> 00:21:58.845
Yeah, I still have some shame and embarrassment around this because I was very pro-choice and that's why I used that language earlier of like pro-abortion.
00:21:58.845 --> 00:22:01.174
Now I feel very pro-abortion.
00:22:01.174 --> 00:22:11.483
I don't even consider myself pro-choice, I like, I think it's, it needs to exist in the world like there's no, yeah, there's nothing like it'll be like.
00:22:11.523 --> 00:22:19.400
As long as pregnancy is not something you can control, yeah, there needs to be a way to make it safe to make it yeah.
00:22:19.400 --> 00:22:20.059
Yeah.
00:22:20.500 --> 00:22:21.201
Like it's like.
00:22:21.201 --> 00:22:30.769
It's also like this false illusion, the choice piece because so many people come to me and they're like I didn't have a choice, like my relationship was abusive.
00:22:30.769 --> 00:22:46.262
I was like barely feeding the kids I have, I and so I have really wobbly feelings around the choice because even though it it is our choice like we do get to decide what to do with our bodies it doesn't always feel like a choice.
00:22:46.262 --> 00:22:48.762
So I think it's just very wobbly for me.
00:22:49.355 --> 00:22:52.652
Well, it's a choice between two bad options.
00:22:53.013 --> 00:22:54.621
Yeah, a lot of times that's the case.
00:22:54.755 --> 00:23:01.895
People don't go in and say, oh, you don't wake up in the morning and think, you know what, I would love to have an abortion today.
00:23:01.895 --> 00:23:05.284
No, that's not how that works.
00:23:05.284 --> 00:23:10.905
So if you say pro-abortion, you're not like, okay, I'm going to go get a latte and abortion, and then I'm going to go to Disneyland.
00:23:10.905 --> 00:23:12.597
That's not how this works.
00:23:12.597 --> 00:23:16.486
No, this is never easy.
00:23:16.486 --> 00:23:18.148
This isn't people's life goal.
00:23:18.875 --> 00:23:42.905
I think sometimes it is easy for people yeah, and that's why I'm kind of course, correcting there, but I know it's super tricky language and we've had terrible like there's just not enough people talking about it, so we're all figuring it out together, including me, even though I talk about it all day, every day, like yeah, it's never not important is how I would word it, like yes, it's always a decision that should be respected.
00:23:42.905 --> 00:23:45.170
Should be again language.
00:23:45.496 --> 00:23:46.299
So wonky.
00:23:46.515 --> 00:23:51.584
But it's a decision that I think we should respect and honor.
00:23:51.584 --> 00:23:57.902
Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's wanted, sometimes it's not wanted, it's just like really messy.
00:23:57.902 --> 00:24:06.101
It's not wanted, it's just like really messy.
00:24:06.101 --> 00:24:09.185
And the pro-choice, pro-life binaries as they exist are excessively messy, like really, really messy.
00:24:09.185 --> 00:24:18.898
I didn't fit into either camp but, to answer your original question, I would have called myself pro-choice up until age 38 when I got pregnant didn't plan.
00:24:20.688 --> 00:24:31.622
I would have called myself pro-choice, because it was like the label you pick when you're a liberal woman and a women's studies major and a feminist and the like, but I didn't understand that.
00:24:31.622 --> 00:24:35.181
That didn't tell the whole story until I had an abortion.
00:24:35.181 --> 00:24:51.548
So I was the person who was pro-choice, by language, by intellect, but I also would have told you, probably until my mid-30s, that I would never choose it.
00:24:51.548 --> 00:24:54.119
Yeah, I was that person, right?
00:24:54.240 --> 00:24:54.481
Yeah.
00:24:55.694 --> 00:24:58.778
I would never have an abortion, but I think it should be accessible for other people.
00:24:58.778 --> 00:25:12.520
I see now and I have some shame and embarrassment because I recognize that that confidence I had in that language was actually just a lack of awareness, like I didn't get it.
00:25:12.520 --> 00:25:16.165
So it was easy for me to have that touch point.
00:25:16.165 --> 00:25:25.855
And now I do know, like if I could go back now and answer the question, I would say I'm pro-choice and I have no idea what I would do Exactly.
00:25:25.855 --> 00:25:26.277
Yeah.
00:25:26.297 --> 00:25:30.045
I wanted to say I'm pro-choice, I would never choose it for myself.
00:25:30.045 --> 00:25:33.176
So it's very, it's tricky.
00:25:33.176 --> 00:25:36.284
There's no right way to talk about this.
00:25:36.284 --> 00:25:41.917
My entire body of work is like let's just talk, let's be curious, let's ask a lot of questions.
00:25:41.917 --> 00:25:44.924
There's no answers in any of this.
00:25:44.924 --> 00:25:47.838
There's no right way to talk about it, no wrong way to talk about it.
00:25:47.838 --> 00:25:52.355
But these are all the things I've learned along the way in my story.
00:25:52.355 --> 00:25:58.327
So I would have said I've known I wanted to be a mom since I was four, right?
00:25:59.155 --> 00:26:01.565
Since you can remember your brain being active.
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So much identity.
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